Actually, the most effective method of affecting change is to come onto the forums, pay Blizzard to do so, and cry about how you don’t have enough purples in your bags and how your life sucks because you can’t get your BIS items on day 1 of the expansion.
Everyone knows that’s the real way.
I’ve done both and not much changed.
You can leave them all the details when you actually UNSUB. Just went through it yesterday. In the reasons section before you leave, you can type AS MUCH AS YOU WANT in a giant text box.
Great use of your time, my man. I’m certain there is no more productive thing you could be doing with your life. 
that’s nonsense. i guarantee the quarterly disclosures are not just a single sheet of paper with a time played metric in the middle. investors are looking at profit/loss, revenue and revenue growth, etc.
dividends are not determined by time played metrics.
your friends who own 20 shares of activision are not representative of the large investors, which are institutional investors that could not care less about raiderio or time played or anything else that happens in a single game made by a company that makes lots of games
I would have never played WoW in the first place if I gave one sh*t about being productive. Please.
When you unsub you are given an opportunity to leave feedback. Voting with your wallet works tremendously well in the biz, most SaS solutions (or in this case a GaS) have a market team pouring over user analytics and measuring / gauging feedback.
Blizzard likely constantly focuses on the amount of users logged in, average duration of player sessions, rate of new accounts, duration of subscription, rate of subscription, activities players are doing in-game (% doing their callings, % doing raids, % doing dungeons) and at what difficulty.
Reports likely go out to key stakeholders I would bet perhaps nightly; hell for my own gig we have real-time engagement metrics using tools like ElasticSearch and Kibana.
Games are notoriously rich in user data metrics.
Not saying that constructive complaints is useless (it definitely helps) but the moment you start hitting that revenue stream it starts to get the attention of the folks that you don’t want to have asking questions.
This is not true. Express your concerns. Be civil. Be constructive if possible. Ignore the trolls who respond. Just don’t expect that every post will be answered or every request fulfilled. The forums are one source of aggregate information which provides valuable feedback for the devs.
Your post is pure irony.
Not enough people are having issues for your two step process to make a difference.
Have an issue with the game, post a constructive post on these forums.
Personally, like many, I’m loving shadowlands and have been playing way more than I have in years.
I’m pretty confident that with the less loot and no bad luck protection people will do what OP says regardless in under a few months.
Alright, you make a good point there.
for most players it’s more loot, whole set of upgradable gear that just need to do some dailies to upgrade, seriously never had this much of a set this early in any other expansion.
Well yes, that would be the nuclear option.
It’s also possible to like a game enough to keep playing it… but still have issues they wouldn’t mind fixing. And while complaints may not help, Blizzard absolutely does listen and have changed things based on complaints in the past.
You could always take the Karen Strategy as an option. Open a ticket, become I-rate then demand to speak to the manager because the costumer is always right.
Very very true, constructive complaints are read and changes can come from them (key word is constructive)
Complaints in itself are negative. Blizzard has been doing this for some time now.
They know their product. What is it constructive you can offer? A few design ideas. Your assumption is that they did not think of that idea?
They already know. Most developers know how to fix. They only need the green light to fix the issue.
The problem here is upper management, doesnt want developers to fix the issue. They dont consider your issue as priority.
Its always a question of PRIORITY. If something cost resources what is the ROI. If there is no ROI but a QoL then its pushed to the back.
So unless you have monetary value association for the requested change, your feedback is not of value, constructive or not.
I guess when you unsub and they option to tell them why you could explain in there. That is what I will be doing.
Don’t get me wrong, I know I am a casual, I don’t expect to be running heroic, mythic, or even normal level raids. But I do expect to be able to run LFR, I am iLVL168 after spamming Hero dung over and over, HOPING for a drop and I still can not get into LFR.
Yes I am complaining but I DID pay for the game, now it has become a job and not a escape and thus not worth the investment, so when my sub runs out so do I … and for those to about to say “bye” I say “bye”.
Yes, hitting them in the wallet can be effective, but you’re never going to get enough players to simultaneously quit enmass to make a meaningful difference, not when the playerbase presumably numbers into the millions.
Besides, I’m willing to bet that the a vast majority of players are like myself: I still enjoy enough of the game to keep playing, but there are things I dislike and would like to see changed. So I’ll make posts on the forums or chime in on other threads with my two cents. I’m not going to quit the game entirely in hopes that they fix whatever niggling problem I have with it, because that’s getting into the realm of throwing the baby out with the bath water.
And to that end I think the forums are a superior medium to discuss and collect nuanced feedback than a single box you fill out when you quit.
You never know. They’re still human. They’re game developers, not omniscient gods of design and code, so it’s perfectly likely there are player-made solutions that never would have crossed their minds if we hadn’t suggested it. Whether or not they have the authority to implement these changes is a bit irrelevant to the conversation.
You’re also misinterpreting what constructive means.
“This game sucks. Fix it.”
Vs
“I dislike X and here’s how I would like to see it changed.”
Both are complaints. One is constructive. Which one is more likely to be acknowledged, do you think?
Yet Legacy of Steel the EQ Guild where almost all the Blizzard Employee’s and developers hailed from use to post those and many more four letter worded posts on the EQ forums Yelling at the EQ Developers to get their poop together.
Now we’ve NEVER done that to Blizzard ever. I like to think of myself as being very respectful in my wording.
This whole post was meant to bring about dialogue and it worked, more or less.
I wouldn’t have stayed 15 + years in the game if I truly hated it. I see a lot of disillusioned people right now so it upsets me.
Do I want ton’s of people to leave the game, no not on a permanent basis. But on a temporary base to force Blizzard to fix what they have done. Yes I would support that, not because I hate Blizzard or the game; but so they fix the game and it brings people back and people have fun and find this entertainment again.